ERBIL, Iraqi Kurdistan -- The Department of Tourism in the Kurdistan Region has decided to re-evaluate the ranking of hotels and create new guidelines that all hotels must follow.

Omed Kayfi, director of Tourism Affairs, said, “Following the re-evaluation by the Tourism Department, most hotels in Kurdistan will be downgraded one or two stars.”

According to Kayfi, some hotels are not at the standard of their rating.

“The goal of the new guidelines is to reorganize and re-evaluate the grades ‘stars’ were given to the hotels in the past,” he said. “Some of the hotels, motels and restaurants don’t deserve the rating they have received.”   

By building more hotels with international standards, the rating of current hotels would be reduced from four or five to three or four stars, Kayfi said.

Six hotels are rated as five stars in Kurdistan

According to a survey by the Tourism Department, there are 367 hotels and 180 motels in the Kurdistan Region. More than 200 hotels and 128 motels are tourist locations.

In addition, there are more than 300 restaurants and 44 tourism villages across the region.

Only six hotels are rated as five stars.

Nadir Rosti, a spokesman for the Tourism Department, admitted that they granted more stars than deserved to hotels and motels in the past.


“In the beginning, the KRG Tourism Department cared about quantity,” Rosti said. “They gave more stars to the hotels and motels than they deserved in order to encourage them to build more. We currently have a good number of hotels and motels. That’s why from now on we will work on the quality of the hotels.”

New Inspection team to evaluate the quality in Kurdistan

Rosti also said that the department has inspection teams to check the quality and services of hotels.

“In order to improve the quality of the tourist locations, they formed the Department of Inspection and Classification in every tourism office in Kurdistan,” he said. “This department will follow new guidelines in classifying the rating of tourist locations.”

A statistic from the KRG Department of Tourism indicates that the tourism infrastructure has made considerable progress. In the past two years, the number of the hotels has increased by 20 percent, motels by 33 percent and restaurants by 10 percent. The number of tourists has increased by 30 percent.

The department said that last year alone, more than 1.5 million tourists visited Kurdistan.   

Erbil witnessed the biggest tourism growth

Erbil witnessed the biggest tourism growth in the past year compared to the rest of Kurdistan’s cities. According to the Tourism Department, the Arab League will mark Erbil as Iraq’s tourism city for 2014-2015. 

Dawood Sileman, a tourism specialist with a master’s degree in tourism and hotel administration, said, “Granting stars to hotels must be done according to specific rules. Compared to developed countries, there can be some leniency, but it shouldn’t be to the point that it creates negative effects on the quality of the hotels.”

Sileman said that the new guidelines of the Tourism Department are not perfect, but still a positive move.

“Only 50 percent of international tourism standards were considered in the new conditions and guidelines for the tourist locations in Kurdistan by the Tourism Department,” he said. “However, it is still a step forward in tourism if they implement them. It will make the quality of the hotels in Kurdistan better.”

Zahir Muhammad, an official at the Tourism Department, maintained that they have already started enforcing the new rules.

Hotel Owners glad with the new guidelines

Some hotel owners have already welcomed the new guidelines, believing it will be beneficial to their business.

Nahro Abdulla, director of the three-star Asia Hotel, says, “If the new guidelines are implemented for everyone equally then we welcome it. It would be to our benefit if the government downgraded the stars of some of the hotels since those hotels received more stars or were upgraded because they had government connections.”

Herish Ahmad, head of the Hotels and Restaurants Association, participated in writing the new guidelines for rating the hotels.

“If the government enforces the new guidelines with everyone equally we will welcome it, on one condition -- the ranking of hotels isn’t decided by the hotel’s room price.”